help danny.

If you live in the Twin Cities and can possibly swing by and throw some cash down at this event you would be doing a very good thing. Danny is an old friend and a great human being. We met at the bookstore we both worked at in the 90s. Shortly after we both started we were hauling boxes of books in and out of this bookfair and sitting down for a break Danny motioned his flask towards me as if to ask if I wanted a swig. Needless to say we hit it off.

So Danny has blood cancer now and needs help. Danny's mom is not in the best of health and Danny has been taking care of her in recent years. Danny and his mom live 9 houses down from Danny's sister and her 3 kids in an old Minneapolis neighborhood. Reasons to love Danny - he's half Luxembourgian; his Christmas parties held at Paddy's apartment were the most famous and best ever in the history of the city of Minneapolis - literally hundreds of people showed up over the 16 or so hours the party would go on; Danny taught me how to drink (things other than Keystone and Jim Beam), to smoke (Canadian cigs as well as Drummies back when they were still good) and to eat (the man insisted on a proper breakfast of bread baked that morning, cheese, and meat - sometimes it seemed like our old boss Tom didn't appreciate us having breakfast at the bookstore every 9:30am); he used to drag me all over MN in the old VW he was always working on - my job was to hold the heater near the window so as to make a small patch that could be seen through; he is a great polka dancer, or so says my wife; Danny's mom Shirley is one of the sweetest women you will ever meet and watching Danny make her hot Jameson with honey when her cough is bad in winter is downright Dickensian; Danny is the consummate working man's working man - he's spent the last decade cooking in a college cafeteria (he always wanted to be a chef, and is a fantastic cook, but never got to culinary school), worked at a bookstore before that, did some maintenance work, that sort of thing - but beyond that he is just that sort of man Belloc imagined but could never himself really understand, Danny is one of the last true working class blokes - not so keen on aspiration but having nothing against it - I don't know that I know of any other human being whose life is less "My Life: The Movie" than Danny - he is a man with no guile; how many other people do you know who spent a week each January winter camping in self-made igloos on MN's boundary waters, ending that week with a party which would draw 75-100 people coming up from the Cities to drink at the bar Danny and friends made of snow and ice? The man is one of the most remarkable people I have ever met. The link notes him as a "behind the scenes" guy, which is definitely true of Danny, but I have never in my life known a "behind the scenes" sort of person who had endeared himself to so many people and who had so many friendships that rose above the superficial. Danny is a gem.

So please, if you are in the Cities and can make it, go and buy a few drinks at St. Helena's for Danny. If you can't do that, but are feeling especially charitable, email ellenschmitz@mac.comand ask her how to donate some cash straight to Danny's cancer fund. Thanks.

Prayers for him, and thank you for posting this-it is beautiful. I wish I could meet him, and I hope things go well. More's the pity that you have to beg for money so he can be treated. Where is the justice?

Teena, we have a similar situation here in Winston-Salem. Young couple; wife just diagnosed with stage-4 color cancer (which had already spread to the liver at the time she was diagnosed). What young person thinks of having a colonoscopy? Such cancers are so rare among the young. Anyway, they have no insurance, and they have very young kids. Chemo alone costs a fortune. These are the times when the Church (meaning us layfolks) must come through.

What Bull Shit, if Danny was Rich we would never hear this story he would be flying to get is care at some elite hospital, that you and me are not even allowed to speaks it name....

Yes Owen wrote a beautiful story about a wonderful man I am sure, but what it really does is piss me off that we (poor working class folk) have to beg for money to help fight a medical problem when all those rich bastards are hording money and watching us die....

Danny is getting care at an elite hospital, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. This is due to a number of things - it is the hospital in that area which deals with these sorts of weird things, but also MN, despite the attempts of Tim Pawlenty and Michelle Bachmann when they ran MN gov't, still has a better safety net than what we have in TN - bourgeois guilt still exists as a social phenomenon to some degree in MN. Nonetheless Danny's treatment will easily pass 1 million in cost, which could easily ruin his mother and he financially, and perhaps his sister too if she re-mortgages her house as well. Were Danny so fortunate as to live 8 hours north in Winnipeg he would not have to worry about bankruptcy so much, but then again he might not have the quality of care that he will be getting at Mayo either. Though it must be said that Mayo uses some of the money they get treating Saudi royals to treat people who can't afford treatment there - a considerably higher percentage of treatment there is "charity" compared to that of other hospitals - again, in MN educated bourgeoisie at least have the decency to feel guilty and throw some crumbs off the table with regularity. But, yeah, rich people suck and deserve what is (hopefully) coming to them.